


No adjectives to describe the way Iris made him feel

by xswestallen



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Wedding, wedding vows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-07 22:32:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12241899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xswestallen/pseuds/xswestallen
Summary: Barry struggles to put his love for Iris into words as he writes his wedding vows.





	No adjectives to describe the way Iris made him feel

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 3 of Westallen Wedding Week. This time I wrote from Barry’s perspective as he struggles to put his feelings into words.

Barry knew he had a habit of tapping his pencil on the table when feeling frustrated. But, Barry didn’t realize that he was currently tapping his pencil at such a high speed until it was too late. The pencil moved so fast it phased threw the table and fell to his feet. Barry groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. Why was writing wedding vows so difficult?

This was Barry’s 7th attempt at writing vows. Everytime he tried to put his feelings for Iris into words it just came out as a redundant mess of “I love you” and “you’re my best friend”. Barry didn’t think there were enough adjectives in the English language to describe the way Iris made him feel. There may not be enough words in any language to capture the way his heart pounds when she kisses him. Or the overwhelming sense of peace and comfort he got she held his hand. Or what about the way his head would spin when she was wearing those thigh high boots? There definitely weren’t words for that feeling. Ever since they were children she gave him butterflies. Every time he thought that Iris couldn’t make him any happier, she did. Her smile made him rethink the meaning of life and the capacity science is able to explain it.

Barry sipped his coffee and looked over to the couch to see Iris still deep asleep. They were at Joe’s house for movie night but he got called to work before the opening titles finished. Iris said they’d wait up for him but fell asleep within minutes. Barry felt a weird sense of envy as he looked at how relaxed she was. She’d written her vows weeks ago. She was a professional journalist so needless to say she was a much more talented writer than Barry. He thought about what she might’ve said. It must flow so eloquently and perfectly describe her feelings.

But what are those feelings exactly? Obviously Barry knew she loves him. But after pining for Iris for such a long time he still occasionally had trouble believing they were finally together. Iris claimed to love Barry just as much if he loved her, if not more. Barry thinks that impossible. Not to toot his own horn, but Barry’s pretty sure he feels more love for Iris than most people feel for anyone in their lifetime.

He thought about Christmas of 2014, when he first told Iris how he felt. It was terrible timing, and at first she didn’t understand that he meant romantic love, and it was all word vomit. He wished it could’ve been romantic. Through the years Barry sometimes daydreamed about how he’d tell Iris he loved her. He daydreamed about his first kiss with Iris even more frequently.

Barry’s mind played him a scene from a day only he could remember. The day Mardon kidnaped Joe and almost destroy Central City with a tsunami. That was the first time he kissed Iris. Sometimes he had to remind himself that it was real, that it actually happened. The fact that it happened so often in his dream combined with the fact that nobody else could remember that day made the insecure side of Barry believed it was all an elaborate fantasy. But it was real. He couldn’t forget that feeling. At that point, it was the best he’d ever felt.

It was strange that Barry could remember their first kiss but Iris couldn’t. He hadn’t told her the specifics of that erased day. He wondered if he should. Would she be upset that they kissed and she couldn’t remember it? Hopefully not because that day was not the only time it happened. Barry kissed Iris on the porch after defeating Zoom. It felt just as good as their first, first kiss, but he was too emotionally drained at that moment to appreciate it. When Barry created Flashpoint and asked out Iris in that timeline he knew they would need to have another first kiss. He didn’t expect it to be in the presence of Eobard Thawne just moments before his mother was killed again. It was his fourth kiss with Iris that was her first kiss with him. Or… it was the first for both of them because technically those others never happened? So, in a way, they were just figments of Barry’s imagination?

Barry shook his head and decided not to go down the rabbit hole of what was and wasn’t real when it came to the idiosyncrasies of time travel. He still had vows to write. Barry crumpled up the piece of paper in front of him that was blank except for a few crossed out sentences. He stood up and started pacing around the living room. He looked at all the pictures Joe had of him and Iris growing up. That’s when he got the idea. 

He ran at super speed to the attic and searched the many boxes piled in it for his old notebooks. When he found them he felt like he found a long lost treasure. These notebooks were a diary Barry had written from freshman year of high school to a few years after he graduated from college. His feelings for Iris were a recurring theme in the entries. Barry’s idea was to use these entries detailing the feelings he had for Iris at different points in his life as his vows. He thought ‘Hey if my vows are going to be awkward and poorly written, they may as well be sentimental and genuine.’

Barry selected the best Iris focused diary entries and put them them together. He decided to write one final paragraph as an entry for his current self. He wrote “As you can tell, I’ve never been good at writing. I’ve never been able to find the words that accurately describe how much you mean to me, Iris. So I just have to show you. And I promise that I will. Everyday.”


End file.
